Across Colorado’s four national parks, water is both celebrated and sometimes overlooked.

Water is not necessarily at the forefront of the parks’ popular postcards. The parks find themselves in a semi-desert state, after all.

But if you venture far enough in some cases, if you visit at the right time and look closely in other cases, water’s role is clear: essential.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

The park brochure tells of “The Song of the Gunnison.” The brochure implores one to be still and listen to the rush of wind through the deep, narrow canyon — and the rush of water some 2,000 feet below.

That’s the Gunnison River, which has long inspired romantic ruminations. It has inspired desperate, daring tales, including that of Abraham Lincoln Fellows. He is credited as the first to report surviving the passage from either end of the canyon. The river “reverberated and echoed like demons howling over their prey,” he wrote in 1901.

It’s language that serves as a warning to any explorer today. “Kayakers run the river at their own risk,” reads the park website, which also notes Gold Medal fishing.

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

In 2019, a year of particularly generous spring runoff across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, we met an out-of-state man visiting the tallest dunes in North America. Beside his wife at the base, he was looking at something he did not expect to see.

“We didn’t know there was a river to cross!” he remarked.

It’s but one more surprise of perhaps Colorado’s most surprising landscape. Yes, at peak flows typically toward the end of May, Medano Creek can rise like a river and surge, sending waves for kids surfing on floats. That’s when snowpack is plentiful. It can otherwise appear like a more modest stream, no less enjoyed by families who come as if to a beach.

It’s Medano Creek to thank for the sand dunes you see. From the mountains, the water has brought sediment down to be trapped and built up by swirling winds.

Mesa Verde National Park

Water is not the attraction at the archaeological wonder of southwest Colorado. The attractions are the cliff dwellings, built and occupied by the Ancestral Puebloans beginning in the late 1190s. Look closely, and you’ll see how they got water.

The park points to small channels and depressions across the mesa’s vast rock. Those were hand-carved by the ancient people.

“The Ancestral Pueblo people likely knew the location of every seep spring on Mesa Verde,” the park notes. “They often managed the flow of water emerging from a cliff face by carving small depressions into the shale floor, channeling the water into small pools from which to collect the water.”

Rocky Mountain National Park

Lakes and waterfalls are calling cards of the park. Bear Lake might just be the most-photographed scene in Rocky, while others venture on to Dream Lake, Emerald Lake, Lake of Glass, Sky Pond or any of the several bodies of water spotting the alpine. Just as popular are a smattering of cascades: Alberta Falls, Ouzel Falls and Adams Falls among them.

But often missed is a fact making Rocky Mountain National Park of utmost importance: The Colorado River starts in these high boundaries. From the Continental Divide, the river makes its critical way through canyons, deserts and dams of the Southwest.

The headwaters of the Big Thompson and Cache La Poudre rivers also originate in the park.